Sunday Show Roundup, May 24, 2026: Revolt, Deals, and a Party in Search of Itself
Featured shows: ABC This Week · Meet the Press (NBC) · CNN State of the Union · Fox News Sunday
On a Memorial Day weekend dominated by fast-moving news, the Sunday shows grappled with three intertwined crises testing the Trump administration heading into the 2026 midterms: an unfinished, hotly contested deal to end the U.S. conflict with Iran; a rare and raucous Republican uprising in the Senate over a Justice Department fund critics call unconstitutional; and a Democratic Party still struggling to explain what went wrong in 2024 — and what it stands for now. Across all four programs, the underlying anxiety was the same: with November less than six months away, both parties appear capable of squandering the advantage handed to them. Assistance from Claude AI.
Topic 1: The Iran Deal — Progress, Skepticism, and a Lot of Unknowns
Covered on: ABC This Week, Meet the Press, CNN State of the Union, Fox News Sunday
The most urgent story of the morning was a possible memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran — a framework that, as of Sunday morning, had not been formally announced and that Iran had not publicly confirmed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio set the tone early, telling multiple outlets that “significant progress” had been made but “not final progress.” President Trump, reached briefly by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, declined to detail the emerging agreement but said, “It’s only going to be good news. I don’t make bad deals.”
According to reporting cited across all four shows — including from Axios, CNN, and a FOX News regional source — the draft framework would involve a roughly 60-day ceasefire, a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, some relief on frozen Iranian assets, and Iranian commitments to refrain from pursuing nuclear weapons while entering negotiations on its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium. U.S. forces would remain in the region for 30 days as a signal that military options stay on the table.
What supporters said: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), appearing on Fox News Sunday, credited the administration with driving Iran’s economy to its knees and said gas prices should fall once the strait reopens. Former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus, on the same panel, urged patience, arguing the president “understands leverage” and would not sign off on a deal that left Iran’s nuclear capacity intact. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), on Meet the Press, called for a negotiated end to the conflict and noted that the war had already driven up food and fuel prices — outcomes he and the now-defeated Rep. Thomas Massie had tried to prevent through a War Powers Act resolution. Rep. Thomas Massie, also on Meet the Press, offered a blunter endorsement: “If Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz are crashing out last night, I’d say it’s probably a pretty good deal.”
What skeptics said: The loudest critics were not Democrats. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, said the deal “doesn’t make sense” to him and aligned himself with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, who called a 60-day ceasefire “a disaster.” Tillis noted that Pentagon officials had told Congress just eleven weeks earlier that Iran’s defenses had been “obliterated” and nuclear material was nearly in hand — and asked how accepting an outcome that leaves enriched uranium inside Iran squares with that assessment. He added that any agreement not ratified by Congress was “doomed to fail.” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), on CNN, was sharper: he argued Trump had actually made conditions worse than before his first term, noted that Iran’s government is now more hardline than when the war began, and said the president was “being played as a fool.” On Meet the Press, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell observed that the Gulf states privately wanted the war over — fearing Iranian retaliation — while Israel was “furious” and pushing for continued military action.
The comparison problem: Multiple guests across shows raised what may be the administration’s most politically awkward question: whether this deal is better or worse than the Obama-era nuclear agreement (the JCPOA) that Trump repeatedly denounced. Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), on Fox News Sunday, said the deal appeared to take things “back really to the pre-war status quo” — with Iran now having more leverage over the Strait of Hormuz than before. Fox’s Leslie Marshall said flatly: “This is a win for Iran.” Priebus pushed back, correctly noting that the deal’s final terms were still unknown. CNN commentator Scott Jennings, a Republican, said he trusted Rubio’s assurance that the president would not sign anything that left Iran able to develop nuclear weapons, but said he was “dubious” about Iran’s long-term intentions.
⚑ Fact-check flag: Sen. Booker stated during his CNN interview that the U.S. had “lost four soldiers” in the Iran conflict, then corrected himself to 13, then said 14. The true casualty figure deserves verification; discrepancies in this sensitive area warrant follow-up.
Topic 2: The Anti-Weaponization Fund — Republican Revolt in the Senate
Covered on: ABC This Week, Meet the Press, CNN State of the Union, Fox News Sunday
The second dominant story — and the one that most clearly animated the Sunday programs — was the $1.776 billion Justice Department fund that the Trump administration announced this week to compensate people who claim they were unfairly targeted by the government. The fund, drawn from a settlement Trump reached with the IRS over the 2019 leak of his tax returns, would not require an act of Congress. Applications would be open to anyone claiming to have been a victim of government “weaponization” — a category that, as of now, appears to include January 6 defendants who were convicted of assaulting Capitol Police officers. When Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Republican senators Thursday to explain the fund, the meeting erupted. Sen. Ted Cruz described it as having “fireworks at an epic level” and called it “one of the roughest meetings” in his Senate tenure, saying colleagues were “screaming” at Blanche.
Sen. Thom Tillis on CNN — the most extensive solo guest on this topic: Tillis, who is not seeking reelection and has been publicly targeted by Trump as a “RINO,” did not hold back. He called the fund “stupid on stilts,” said whoever advised the president to create it should expect to be fired, and labeled it a “payout pot for punks.” He drew a distinction between legitimate victims of government overreach — someone falsely arrested at a school board meeting, he said, deserves redress — and people who were convicted by juries for assaulting police officers. Tillis said he expected the Senate to attach amendments defunding the program when Congress returns from recess. He also lit into the president’s endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary runoff, calling Paxton “an empty suit” and comparing his ethical record to “Jeffrey Dahmer suffering from an eating disorder.” (The analogy is Tillis’s, offered in colorful frustration; readers should weigh it accordingly.)
Bipartisan effort in the House: On ABC’s This Week, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY), co-chairs of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, appeared together to announce legislation that would block the fund from disbursing a single dollar. Fitzpatrick explained that the underlying legal authority — a 1956 statute granting the attorney general broad discretion over the federal Judgment Fund — has been stretched far beyond its original intent, and that his bill would amend that statute while also rescinding the current fund. Suozzi framed it as a straightforward constitutional check: “Congress appropriates money. The executive branch does not have a dime of money in its own right.” Both acknowledged that getting the bill past Speaker Mike Johnson and a Trump veto would be difficult, and that a discharge petition — the procedural tool that was used to force a vote on the Epstein files — might be necessary. Fitzpatrick said many Republican colleagues told him privately they support blocking the fund, but declined to predict how many would put their names on legislation.
Rep. Massie on Meet the Press: Massie, asked directly whether he would support giving fund money to those who assaulted police on January 6, declined to endorse payments but pivoted to a broader argument: the right remedy is to change the laws so that people harmed by government — on the left or right — can seek redress through courts, not through a fund controlled by the attorney general.
The administration’s defense: Rep. Byron Donalds on Fox News Sunday offered the White House’s strongest defense, arguing the fund is not unprecedented — he said similar settlements creating third-party disbursement funds occurred under the Obama administration — and that the IRS did genuinely victimize Trump, making the settlement legitimate. Reince Priebus, also on Fox, said he personally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees during the first Trump term because of what he described as bad-faith investigations, and said it was “wrong” for the government to do that to people. He predicted the administration would place parameters around the fund that would bar January 6 violent offenders from participating.
⚑ Fact-check flag: Donalds’ comparison to Obama-era “sue-and-settle” DOJ practices is partially accurate but contested in its details — legal commentators including conservative attorney Andy McCarthy (quoted on Fox) have called this fund a “profound abuse of political power” that goes well beyond prior precedents. The constitutionality of drawing from the Judgment Fund for non-lawsuit, non-judgment payments is disputed. Former DOJ official Sarah Isgur, on ABC’s roundtable, noted two specific legal problems: that Trump was effectively settling with himself (not an arms-length settlement), and that many potential claimants are time-barred because the two-year statute of limitations on their claims has already expired.
Topic 3: Thomas Massie — A Political Eulogy Delivered in Real Time
Covered on: Meet the Press (primary interview), ABC This Week (roundtable)
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) lost his congressional primary Tuesday to a Trump-backed opponent, ending 14 years in Congress. He appeared on Meet the Press for what amounted to a lengthy exit interview with host Kristen Welker.
Massie offered a defiant, self-aware account of his defeat. He attributed his loss to an overwhelming flood of outside spending — he described the race as the most expensive congressional primary in history — and to an artificial intelligence-generated video that he said falsely depicted him checking into a hotel with progressive congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. He said the video “was actually very effective on the boomers.” He argued that 45% of the vote he received despite a $20-to-25 million campaign against him showed that a meaningful slice of the Republican electorate still shares his principles.
On his political future, Massie declined to rule out a presidential run in 2028 — including, pointedly, as something other than a Republican — but said he’d spent the week on his farm with grandchildren and peach trees and was in no hurry. “Every hour that passes, I get decompressed a little bit more,” he said. “It’s like coming up from the bottom of the ocean.”
His broader warning for the Republican Party: he said Trump had alienated fiscal hawks by “running DOGE out of town,” alienated MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) supporters by kowtowing to pesticide and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and alienated anti-war voters. He predicted these defections would cost the party in November — a form of what he called “Trump Disappointment Syndrome” on the right. He also said he planned to continue using his remaining seven months in office to name names in the Epstein files, calling Acting AG Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel out for what he described as perjury in their testimony about the file contents.
On ABC’s roundtable, columnist Dana Milbank observed wryly that Republicans seem to find courage to criticize Trump only after they’ve lost or decided not to run — noting that this pattern has produced plenty of eloquent exit statements but little sustained legislative resistance.
Topic 4: The Democratic Autopsy — A Report Nobody Loves
Covered on: ABC This Week, Meet the Press, CNN State of the Union, Fox News Sunday
The Democratic National Committee this week released a report it had commissioned on the party’s 2024 losses — reportedly under pressure after CNN obtained a copy. The report was widely panned across all four shows, from guests of both parties, for what it left out as much as what it included.
The most consistent criticism: the report does not mention President Biden’s decision to run for reelection or his declining health as a factor in the loss. It uses the word “inflation” only in the context of campaign spending, not as an issue that drove voters away. It does not address the party’s internal divisions over Gaza and Israel. DNC Chair Ken Martin publicly distanced himself from the report.
On ABC, former DNC Chair Donna Brazile called the report “a cold case” with “no summary, no conclusion, no footnotes,” and suggested it should have been buried. Conservative commentator Ramesh Ponnuru said Democrats genuinely need to grapple with how their handling of immigration during the Biden years created an underlying vulnerability that hasn’t gone away even as voters grow unhappy with Trump’s approach.
On Meet the Press, Rep. Ro Khanna said the party does not need to abandon reason, but must acknowledge that “the status quo has failed” and that the economic system has generated too much inequality. He argued the DNC should keep Chair Ken Martin — who he praised for banning super PACs in Democratic primaries — but agreed that the autopsy could have been handled better. He said flatly he does not think Martin should resign.
On CNN, Sen. Cory Booker offered the most sweeping critique of his own party’s establishment, calling for new leadership without naming names, and proposing a platform centered on eliminating federal income tax on the first $75,000 of income, barring elected officials from trading stocks, and making a direct case against what he called “massive corruption” across all three branches of government. When pressed on whether he wanted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step aside, Booker declined to say so directly.
On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen called the report “incredibly shoddy and incomplete” but agreed with its finding that Democrats had failed to connect with voters in the heartland. He added that it would be a mistake for the party to simply try to restore the pre-Trump status quo heading into 2028.
Former Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham, appearing on CNN’s panel, offered a more pointed assessment: the Democratic Party’s favorability sits at 20 percent, he said, and while fundamentals favor Democrats in the midterms, “Democrats cannot just count on not being Trump.” He suggested the party embrace a politically popular position — congressional age limits — as a way to demonstrate it has learned something from 2024.
Topic 5: Texas, Latino Voters, and the Stakes for November
Covered primarily on: ABC This Week
ABC’s John Quinones filed a substantial field report from South Texas on the question of whether Latino voters who swung sharply toward Trump in 2024 are beginning to move back toward Democrats. Trump won 55% of the Latino vote in Texas in 2024, a 14-point improvement over 2020 and a 21-point improvement over 2016. In response, Republicans redrew congressional maps to lean on that advantage, converting five previously Democratic districts — four of them majority-Latino — into Republican-leaning seats.
But Quinones found cracks. A three-time Trump voter and construction industry executive described ICE enforcement as disrupting his business even among legal workers. The Republican mayor of McAllen, a border city that is 90% Hispanic, said the party may have “overplayed their hand.” Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico, who won the party’s primary in March with strong Latino backing, is positioning himself as the first Democrat to win a statewide Texas race since 1994.
This connects to a subplot running across multiple shows: Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn in the Tuesday Republican runoff. Multiple guests — Tillis on CNN, Walter on Meet the Press, Wegmann on Fox — noted that Republicans across the board consider Paxton a weaker general election candidate than Cornyn, and that a Paxton nomination could put a Texas Senate seat in play, forcing the party to divert resources that could have protected other vulnerable races.
Topic 6: EPA and Environmental Regulation (CNN only)
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin appeared on CNN’s State of the Union to address two issues: a chemical tank emergency near Disneyland that had prompted the evacuation of 50,000 residents in Orange County, California, and the administration’s rollback of certain drinking water regulations covering “forever chemicals” (PFAS).
On the chemical emergency, Zeldin said the most likely scenario as of Sunday morning was a low-volume release rather than a catastrophic explosion, and that EPA had personnel and air monitors on the ground working with local authorities.
On PFAS, Zeldin defended the administration’s proposed rescission of limits on four specific compounds, arguing the Biden EPA had combined regulatory steps in a way that violated the Safe Drinking Water Act’s procedural requirements — creating litigation vulnerability that the current EPA is trying to fix proactively. He said the limits on the two most-studied PFAS compounds (PFOA and PFOS) are being maintained, and argued the result of following proper procedure could ultimately be “stricter limits than what was set previously.” Host Jake Tapper noted that EPA’s own website acknowledges the chemicals are linked to cancer, hormone disruption, and developmental effects in children — a line of questioning Zeldin did not directly rebut, instead emphasizing the procedural rationale.
⚑ Fact-check flag: Zeldin’s claim that following proper procedure “might end up with stricter limits” deserves scrutiny. Environmental law experts not affiliated with the administration have generally argued that rescinding existing limits — even to restart the regulatory process — leaves communities without protection during the intervening period, regardless of what the eventual outcome might be.
Closing Synthesis
What unified this Memorial Day Sunday across four programs was a shared sense that Washington is generating enormous amounts of noise — a possible Iran deal, a Republican revolt, a Democratic autopsy — without resolving any of its core contradictions. Republican senators are angry enough at Trump to make headlines, but not yet angry enough to vote against him in ways that would matter. Democrats have a structural tailwind heading into November but a messaging vacuum. And the Iran conflict, which has driven up gas prices, rattled the economy, and cost 14 American lives, appears headed toward a ceasefire framework that critics on both left and right describe as leaving the U.S. with less than it went in to achieve. The November midterms are 24 weeks away. Both parties, as CNN’s Kristen Soltis Anderson put it, “seem to be in a race to try to hand the midterms to the other side.”